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Canada needs to do ‘more of everything,’ including military strikes, Stephen Harper says

A photograph of a drowned three-year-old Syrian refugee has brought the crisis to the federal election campaign. NDP Leader Tom Mulcair and Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau say Canada needs to do more for Syrian refugees.

“We could drive ourselves crazy with grief, obviously we try to do what we can do to help,” Harper said.

Speaking at a Conservative rally in Surrey, B.C., he addressed the refugee crises in Europe that hit home yesterday when photographs of a drowned Syrian 3-year-old boy made headlines. His 5-year-old brother and mother also died.

“It brings tears to our eye,” he said. “It truly is a heartbreaking situation and a terrible tragedy.”

But Harper denied reports that the boys’ application for refugee status in Canada had been rejected.

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He agreed that Canada needed to do “more of everything,” but was adamant that Canada’s refugee policy was not to blame for the boys’ deaths.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper speaks about the Syrian refugee crisis during a campaign event in Surrey, B.C., Thursday. Harper agreed that Canada needed to do “more of everything,” but was adamant that Canada’s refugee policy was not to blame for the deaths of the two young Syrian boys who drowned off Turkey as their family tried to cross to Greece. (Adrian Wyld / CP)

Canada has the “most generous immigration system in the world,” he said, and also gives generously to humanitarian aid.

“Refugee policy alone is not a solution to this process,” he said.

Harper emphasized Canada’s military campaign against the Islamic State as essential to curbing the violence in Syria, and he criticized those that oppose Canada’s military campaign yet demand that we take in more refugees.

“I do not know how, for the life of me, you reach that kind of conclusion,” he said.

Chris Alexander, the minister who was personally handed the immigration file of the Kurdi family, said Thursday he was “deeply troubled” by a widely circulated photo of the drowned refugee, but he said he was “meeting officials to ascertain the facts” of the case.

The image of a Turkish police officer carrying the boy’s lifeless body has galvanized global outrage over the Syrian refugee crisis, and reports that the child’s family was turned down by Canada dominated the federal election campaign Thursday.

Rehan Kurdi and her sons Alan and Galib were among 12 migrants who drowned when two boats carrying them from the Turkish coast to the Greek island of Kos capsized. They had fled the Syrian town of Kobani. The boys’ names were originally misspelled by Turkish authorities.

In a written statement Thursday, Alexander repeated his party’s election pledge to increase its targets to accept Iraqi and Syrian refugees, and stressed that the government has already resettled thousands.

He said he was investigating what has happened.

Reaction from the campaign trail was swift and emotional.

NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair choked up Thursday at a news conference where he noted how Galib might also have been saved.

“The older child could have been going to school next week in Canada,” Mulcair said. “This is hard for everyone.”

“The international community has failed,” he said. “Canada has failed.”

Canadian legislator Fin Donnelly told The Canadian Press that he had submitted a request on behalf of Fatima Kurdi, who had wanted to bring her brothers and their families to Canada, but the request was turned down by Canadian immigration officials. Tima Kurdi, a hairdresser in Vancouver, is the sister of the drowned boys’ father Abdullah, who survived.

Donnelly, the NDP candidate running for re-election in Port Moody-Coquitlam, said he hand-delivered a letter to Alexander in March.

“He promised that he would look into it for me,” Donnelly told CBC-TV. “I thought that he would actually do it.”

Kurdi is a “good upstanding citizen” who has lived in Canada for 20 years, Donnelly said.

She received the “horrific news” Wednesday and saw photographs taken at the beach where the bodies washed ashore, he said.

Donnelly said he doesn’t know what else Kurdi could have done, as private sponsorship should have speeded up the process.

In his statement, Alexander said: “The tragic photo of young Alan Kurdi and the news of the death of his brother and mother broke hearts around the world. Like all Canadians, I was deeply saddened by that image and of the many other images of the plight of the Syrian and Iraqi migrants fleeing persecution at the hands of ISIS.

“I am meeting with officials to ascertain both the facts of the case of the Kurdi family and to receive an update on the migrant crisis.”

Jean-Bruno Villeneuve, a spokesman for the department of Citizenship and Immigration Canada, issued a statement Thursday afternoon that expressed condolences to the family, and said “an application for Mr. Mohammad Kurdi and his family was received by the department, but was returned as it was incomplete as it did not meet regulatory requirements for proof of refugee status recognition.

“There was no record of an application received for Mr. Abdullah Kurdi and his family.

“Canada did not offer citizenship to Mr. Abdullah Kurdi.”

Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was quick to criticize the Conservatives’ response. “You don’t get to suddenly discover compassion,” Trudeau said in Montreal.

The Liberals would bring 25,000 Syrian refugees to Canada if elected, Trudeau said. “Officials have to establish a quick process to bring these people in . . . . What is lacking now is a political will.”

Mulcair said Canada and the international community have failed. “It’s just unbearable that we’re doing nothing. Canada has an obligation to act,” Mulcair said.

“We’re worried about how we got here, how the collective international response has been so ineffective, how Canada has failed so completely . . . . How desperate do you have to be to take that risk with your kids? That desperation of the parents is what we have to ask ourselves about.”

Mulcair said it was “hard” for all Canadians to see the image of the dead boy, yet he declined to shift the responsibility solely onto Alexander’s shoulders.

“It’s too easy to assign blame,” said Mulcair.

Instead he called on Ottawa to immediately take in 10,000 Syrian refugees, as he said the UN has asked Canada to do, and “act now.”

“Let’s be ambitious!” said Mulcair. “Let’s get the 10,000 target done right away!”

Alexander, who is running for re-election in the Ajax riding, defended the Conservative government in his statement Thursday.

“Canada has one of the most generous per-capita immigration-and-refugee settlement programs in the world. In fact, Canada resettles more than one in 10 refugees worldwide.”

He said the Conservatives have set a target for Canada to accept 11,300 Syrians, and has resettled 2,300 so far.

“The Prime Minister also recently announced that a Conservative Government would add an additional 10,000 persecuted ethnic and religious minorities from the region,” Alexander said.

Speaking to CBC on Wednesday, before news broke that the Kurdi family had sought refuge in Canada, Alexander accused the media of ignoring the situation in Syria.

“The biggest conflict and humanitarian crisis of our time has been there for two years, and you and others have not put it in the headlines where it deserves to be,” he said.

Amnesty International appealed to the prime minister to “take immediate, concrete and generous steps to significantly boost Canada’s contribution to the mounting Syrian refugee crisis.

“The need for meaningful Canadian action has become all the more urgent with the agonizing news that there is a Canadian connection to the heartbreaking case of Alan Kurdi, a 3-year old Syrian toddler whose body washed ashore this week on a Turkish beach,” Alex Neve, secretary general of the English branch of Amnesty International Canada and Béatrice Vaugrante, directrice générale of Amnistie Internationale Canada francophone said in a joint open letter.

“The tragedy that has befallen Alan Kurdi and his family dramatically underscores that this crisis is not one for Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan alone to bear at the frontlines,” they write. “It is not a crisis limited to Greece, Italy, Hungary and others faced with mass influxes. It is not a crisis which the European Union alone must resolve . . . .

“Given the reports that have surfaced revealing that Alan Kurdi and his family had applied for resettlement through the assistance and sponsorship of his aunt, a Canadian citizen, and that the application was unsuccessful for reasons that are not yet clear, it is of obvious crucial importance that measures be taken to ensure fast processing of cases of Syrians with family connections in Canada,” they write.

What we know so far:

Bodies of two children are among 12 migrants, including their mother, to wash up on a beach in Turkey on Sept. 2, putting a devastating human face on the Syrian refugee crisis.

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